1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to analyzing consumer characteristics and more specifically to making inferences and predictions about consumer behavior based on automatically collected consumer location data.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Businesses can often benefit from knowledge about the behavior of their customers or prospective customers. For example, a business may offer certain products or undertake a marketing strategy based on its beliefs regarding who its customers are. If these beliefs are inaccurate, though, the business' efforts may be misdirected and the business may fail to maintain old customers or attract new customers.
Efforts have been previously made at collecting information about consumers who may be customers and prospective customers of a business. In some such techniques, a researcher may ask consumers about their identities, preferences or behaviors using direct questioning. These questions may be designed to solicit particular information about consumers, such as regions in which a business' customers live, a socioeconomic grouping of consumers, how often the consumers shop at the business, factors influencing purchasing decisions, and their consuming preferences. Written or oral questionnaires, one-on-one interviews, brief point-of-sale questions at the business, focus groups, and telephone or online surveys are examples of ways in which information about consumers can be collected using direct questioning.
This same information may be voluntarily provided by consumers when the consumers register for a service. This may be the case when consumers are registering for discount programs or for services offered commercially by the business. Thus, when a consumer subscribes to services offered by the business, direct questions may solicit information that may be used to acquire information about the individual consumer and for the general class of that business' consumers. The acquired information may then be analyzed to determine information useful to the business.